warren · j. · dew

I was late putting on my socks this morning; I hadn't folded my part of the last load of laundry yet, so I had to wait until I went downstairs to the second floor to get socks off the dryer. I then sat down on the bottom stair near where Margaret was playing and took off my slippers to put the socks on.

About this time, Jomkwan, our au pair, came up from the first floor. Normally, Margaret is more than happy to join Jomkwan for her all day play date. This time, though, she uncharacteristically resisted. When Jomkwan tried to take her, Margaret said "no!" very clearly, and refused to be picked up by either Jomkwan or myself.

Though I didn't make the connection immediately, normally when I sit on the stair and take my slippers off, the next step is to put my shoes on and go out somewhere. Margaret often gets to go along. This time, though, after my socks were on, I put my slippers back on instead of donning shoes. Margaret's plan had backfired - not only was there no walk with daddy coming up, but she had just lost her chance to go with Jomkwan for the day too! There followed a bit of forlorn crying and tugging at daddy's slippers to try to get them off, but Margaret's expression showed that she really knew she had outsmarted herself this time.

Fortunately, after stashing the day's supply of formula in the first floor refrigerator, Jomkwan came back up and gave Margaret another chance. This time, Margaret went more than willingly.

Margaret can say maybe half a dozen words now, but the only one that elicits a response from her minions - er, parents - with any reliability is "up". Evidently it takes about eight months for minions to learn a new word.

So what do you do when you have a one bit communication channel, but need to communicate more than one bit of information? Well, previously she used the word only when facing the minion intended to complete the task. Now, though, she faces the object she wants to be put into. If she wants to be in the high chair rather than just picked up, she faces the high chair when she says "up".

It only took the minions a couple of days to catch on to the fact that she wasn't expecting the high chair to grow arms and pick her up.

Margaret's measurements at 15 months were 47 cm head circumference, 30.5 inch height, 21 lb 14 oz. I knew she was getting heavier!

The head measurement is about 80th percentile for girls, height about 55th percentile, weight about 35th percentile. The formula is making her a little less slim than she was on breast milk, but it doesn't seem to be making her fat.

Margaret was better behaved on the scale, probably because we let her sit up. She kept pushing against the nurse with her feet on the length measurement - maybe she wanted to be taller. She really doesn't like the head measurement and kept pushing the tape measure off; I'm not sure why she objected so much.

The doctor mentioned that at this age the babies generally start disliking the doctor's office because they remember getting prodded and poked. Margaret objected only when the stethoscope was on her, and of course when when the vaccines were being injected.

I don't think it was a case of her having forgotten, though. On her way out, I asked her to say goodbye to the doctor, and the doctor seemed really surprised and happy when she smiled at him. When she went by the office of the nurse who had given her the vaccines, though, she squeezed up against the far wall of the corridor and walked by very quietly. It was really cute.

Weight gain happens when you eat more calories than you use, right? Not so fast. Here's a really excellent presentation given at the Dartmouth Hitchcock medical center on why that might not be the cause of weight gain, after all:

http://www.dhslides.org/mgr/mgr060509f/f.htm

The speaker, Gary Taubes, is highly entertaining and provides a compelling presentation. It is a 45 minute presentation, though, so you might want an hour or so free before you watch it.

At four months, Margaret was at 50th percentile for weight, 75th percentile for height, and 50th percentile for head circumference.

Now, at nine months, she is at 20th percentile for weight, 40th percentile for height, and 75th percentile for head circumference.

Hmm.

Our family has been on a diet for the past three months.

It's not the ordinary kind of diet, the kind one is on to try to lose weight. Rather, it resulted from our attempts to eat healthy during Elizabeth's pregnancy and lactation period, because we were kind of single minded in trying to give Margaret the best possible start on life. It's "our" attempts because, although we were specifically interested in the nutrients passing through Elizabeth, I do the cooking and thus most of the dietary planning.

( It started with thinking about what nutrients we'd need to build a new baby while preserving Elizabeth's health. )

In the course of this research, I ran into an interesting diet idea. The idea is this: we should eat what our ancestors ate during the paleolithic period, from roughly 5 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago. Why? Because a significant amount of human evolution, including the parts that differentiated us from the apes - and also, presumably, including evolution involving our diets - happened during those millions of years of hunting and gathering. In contrast, the 10,000 years of neolithic herding and agriculture have not been long enough for us to evolve new genes for that even newer diet; it's barely enough time for us to have had a few gross point mutations.

For someone who believes in evolution, this is a compelling theory. It also dovetails nicely with ( some of our other findings. ) So I started using other aspects of the "paleo diet". ( It's a fairly simple diet. )

Once we fully shifted to this diet, we noticed some changes beyond a healthy baby. The frequent bouts of painful gas that we'd both been having cleared up, as did Elizabeth's constipation. I felt clearer headed; it seemed easier to concentrate at work. Elizabeth no longer felt hungry during the day, despite being on a 1200 calorie diet - though she's sometimes hungry for dinner if I'm home late and she skips her daily snacks or breakfast. We've both ( lost unwanted weight. ) And we both feel like we're eating a lot better than we ever have before, what with the steak, fish, and fresh fruits and vegetables.

There are a few disadvantages. I spend two or three times as much time cooking - maybe 20 minutes for dinner instead of 5-10 before, plus time to prepare Elizabeth's lunches. Typically we need two grocery trips instead of one each week. I'm not sure how much alkaline vegetables we need to prevent bone density loss.

Still, that's a lot better than spending several hours a day gathering and hunting - and risking broken bones in the process - as our real paleolithic ancestors did.